Originally released in 2010 and 2013, the post-apocalyptic first person shooters Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light developed by 4A Games, were released a second time in 2014 as remastered Redux versions. Some of the gameplay and even visual changes apparently weren't to the liking of every fan -- for the first game in particular -- but if you're starting the series from these, you don't really need to worry about the differences between the remasters and the originals.
Immersive game adaptation
Metro 2033 is based on the 2002 novel of the same name by Dmitry Glukhovsky and follows it pretty faithfully. It's not a 1:1 adaptation but it is definitely very close to being so. I believe Artyom's journey through the dark Metro follows almost an identical path. But having read the trilogy of novels over a year ago now, they are starting to meld together in my head: I'm no longer certain in which of the novels any particular event happened.
I think knowing the story beforehand takes a bit from the first-time game experience. I chose to go for the game's "good" ending because it doesn't happen in the book. However, all it changes is the ending cinematic. A dynamic moral state like Dishonored's chaos system would have made things more interesting: to have your decisions and chosen ways alter the journey later in the game.
Some of the ways to gain moral points are odd too. Giving money (bullets) to beggars and saving people makes sense but simple exploration rewarding points not as much. I guess it's from discovering corpses: finding where some person has perished. You're also not locked to the good ending due to accruing enough points, merely given an option to pick it. The "bad", book ending is the canonical one for the game series too.The Metro network's structure lends itself perfectly to a game: each station and each area in-between being their own level, separated by a loading screen. A more robust game engine would have allowed the removal of visible loading screens, making the experience even more immersive than it already is. I still think the Metro fully realized as a free-roam "open" world game could be amazing.
The stations were more spacious than I expected. In the books I remember many of them having rows and rows of tents on the platforms right next to the tracks. There seemed to be a lot more privacy in the game, even if a lot of the dwellings are just shacks built to fill rooms and hallways.
I initially played few chapters without using a guide but then upon learning that there are safes to open with keys -- and that I already missed a couple -- I restarted. The guide was quite extensive and I ended up following it even though I was playing on Epic where the game doesn't have achievements. I would say that by following all achievement restrictions, such as having to ghost some levels, adds variation compared to simply shooting through everything. Finding all of Artyom's collectible journals pieces to read also adds depth to the narrative.
In my opinion, making Artyom a silent protagonist (outside loading screen story catchups) wasn't a good decision. It's always so dumb when characters then even acknowledge the player character not talking -- which happens more than once in Metro 2033. And everyone is monologuing because Artyom isn't responding in any way. Characters also like talking too much: there's almost always more to come after you expected them to have stopped -- and it gets worse in the following games.Customizable challenge
You can pick between Survival and Spartan when starting a new run. The latter provides a more straightforward shooter experience while in the former you have to scrounge every corner for ammunition and gas mask filters.
You're also presented with four difficulty options: the final two affect your HUD visibility in addition to everything else. After much pondering I ended up picking the third one: Ranger. I thought the complete removal of HUD on Ranger Hardcore would be too much. In hindsight, even Ranger was too much in that regard. The lack of tutorial tips on actions leave you completely unaware of many things. I got stuck early on already when trying to pick up the Bastard gun -- you have to hold down the interaction key.There are many actions that require holding down buttons and you won't be aware any of them if you jump straight into the Ranger difficulties without prior knowledge. If the game gave you at least one tip of every action on Ranger, then the lack of HUD wouldn't matter at all. I also wasn't aware if there was a stealth takedown -- a realization that came to me when I first snuck behind someone. With an educated guess I hit the melee button -- there indeed is a stealth takedown.
General difficulty on Ranger was mostly all right. Humans were reasonable opponents: aim for the head and they're easy enough. Tanky mutants on the other hand were more problematic. There are quite a few moments where you and others form a (semi-) circle to fend of a mutant attack. Things get awkward if/when they get to your face and start flailing about. Artyom doesn't have the speed and dexterity for sophisticated dodging in melee range. The Shambler shotgun has such a long reload time too. Despite the frequent mutant attacks, though, the highlight of the game for me was the journey to D6 with Miller and the rest -- such an immersive experience.
Ranger mode also limits you to carrying only two guns instead of three. That is one of the Redux changes I've seen being criticized. Some comments say it's a change introduced in Last Light and added to the first game in the Redux version but others say it was already there in the Ranger Pack DLC -- I don't know which is true. But I do know that two guns is way too limiting. They could have made it so that the third slot was limited to a sidearm only. Carrying one bigger gun in your hands and one on your back in addition to a sidearm feels like a realistic loadout. Although in the book Artyom ever had only two guns on him at once, as I recall.Resources were likewise a non-issue for the most part on my chosen difficulty combination. In the Outpost chapter (I think it was) -- which is one of the on-the-surface ones -- I did run out of filters and things got pretty dicey. But after a few deaths exploring the level, I did eventually manage to scrounge enough of them and make it back into the Metro past the hostile humans and mutants.
Towards the end of the game, in D6, I also ran out of regular ammunition and had to switch to using the currency, the military grade ammunition at the start of the final chapter. And what better place to use it than at the end when there will be no more chances to buy anything. However, I then died not far into the chapter and the checkpoint I restarted at, suddenly had a full-ass ammunition box there right next to me. I guess I had missed it earlier.
Not a 100% reliable save system
Metro 2033's checkpoint system can cause trouble because you only get one save. If the game happens to make it at a bad spot, your only other option is to restart the whole chapter. Luckily the chapters aren't terribly long, so there's not that much to replay if you ever have to resort to that. I had to do that twice: one time Miller and the crew didn't show up at the library because I had somehow bypassed a trigger and another time a seemingly in-safety-made save put me right in front of an oncoming railcar when loaded.
Outside of those issues, Metro 2033 Redux didn't have technical problems for me. The game doesn't have a field-of-view slider, however -- in fact, neither does Last Light nor Exodus. You can easily edit a .cfg file to increase it but apparently above 60 (vertical, which corresponds to around 90 horizontal, I believe) you will start seeing clipping and the incompleteness of the character model. I'd prefer FOV to be a bit wider but 60 is playable. In Exodus, the default is set to 60 already.
Speaking of Miller: his voice didn't quite match what I had imagined him to sound like. In general, the English voice acting is not the most convincing out there -- some of it may be due to the script just not sounding natural in English. Some players insist on using Russian voice overs for absolute immersion but for me acted accents will do just fine. There are also no subtitles for ambient dialogue, thus with Russian audio I wouldn't have understood anything some characters said. I wished there had been subtitles for signs and such too, at least a transliteration to get an idea how the words written in Cyrillic are supposed to be read.I like how they translated and/or simplified the names of the metro stations. For instance, Artyom's home station is simply Exhibition instead of the acronym VDNKh. The station names in the game are far easier to remember compared to the books, which I read in Finnish. (I don't know how the names are in the English translations of the novels.)
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